Polyglot Art Practices: Introduction

Abstract

Polyglot Art PracticesIntroduction Doris Hambuch The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism (2022), edited by Steven G. Kellman and Natasha Lvovich, is the latest among many recent testimonies to the fact that the study of creative multilingualism has been expanding rapidly in the new millennium.1 Much of the resulting research, in particular in English, challenges language hierarchies and the concept of a national language. As Rachael Gilmour and Tamar Steinitz emphasize in their introduction to Multilingual Currents in Literature, Translation and Culture (2018), “monolingual paradigms are inadequate in a world dominated by globalization and migration” (1). Jane Hiddleston and Wen-Chin Ouyang, likewise, state that their Multilingual Literature as World Literature (2021) “argues not only, with Spivak and Mufti, against the dominance of English, but also against a dominant concept of monolingualism2 that has further served to limit and skew the scope of world literature” (3). This special issue on polyglot art practices positions itself within the same movement as it investigates the use of plurilingual creative expression across different genres and media in order to contest the status of a global language and its implications for authors, audiences, publishers, and editors. Despite several genuine efforts, it was not possible to divert the issue’s focus on European languages, although the discourse in most of the contributions is not limited to them. A distinct Canadian perspective is offered throughout the majority of included articles. Plusieurs des personnes ayant contribué à ce numéro ont participé au groupe de recherche sur l’art multi/trans/plurilingue et s’inspirent du manifeste « Pour des savoirs en commun ». Basé sur une table ronde ayant eu lieu au colloque annuel de l’Association canadienne de littérature comparée en 2019, ce manifeste vit dans plusieurs espaces. La table ronde était bilingue, et réunissait des membres de la communauté comparatiste et de la communauté des humanités numériques (Monjour et Mathieu-Lessard 601–602). [End Page 239] « Orienté autour de trois thématiques principales : celles des temporalités, des espaces, et des formats de publication, » (603) le manifeste souligne le pouvoir des langues, notamment dans les propositions « pour un multi-linguisme actif and fluid » (607) et « Let’s think beyond words » (608). Notre groupe a rassemblé des versions différentes de ces propositions à travers diverses traductions, par exemple « For en aktiv flersproglighed med flydende grænser! », « Ας σκεφτούμε χωρίς λόγια! », « 活発で円滑な多言語を目指して », « », ou « He mana tō te kupu » (complit.ca/i-research-group-multi-trans-lingual-art-groupede-recherche-sur-lart-multi-trans-plurilingue/). Un grand merci aux membres du groupe et à leurs ami·e·s pour avoir maintenu le projet vivant. A key study in the field of creative translingualism is Yasemin Yildiz’s Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (2013). With a focus on authors whose common language is German, Yildiz traces the development of a monolingual paradigm back to the late eighteenth century and encourages continuous resistance against this paradigm’s proliferation. “The postmonolingual condition […],” Yildiz warns, as quoted in the opening essay of this issue, “is not resolved by a one-time move beyond the mother tongue, but requires constant reinvention and questioning of the underlying concepts of language and identity. It requires constant exit strategies” (142). Much of the discussion throughout Polyglot Art Practices points towards respective exit strategies, and in the process, a number of examples move beyond the obvious components of language, letters and words, to focus on sound (Roussel; Morris), performance (Ingram; Innes), music (Ingram), and image (Siemens). The issue thus takes its cue from Hiddleston and Ouyang’s instruction, “to explore the phonetic sign in [this] context and its combination with other nonverbal forms of language” (7). Some genres are more conducive to this kind of exploration than others. Two of the seven contributions revolve around lyric poetry, while a third reserves it for a large part of its interdisciplinary inquiry, and the opening essay is itself an experimental prose poem. Other genres addressed include film, theatre, and photography, besides prose. In Translingual Poetics: Writing Personhood Under Settler Colonialism (2018), Sarah Dowling reminds us that poetry has a “very long history of being written across and between languages” (5). Kellman and Lvovich, in their preface to the...